Lloyd tells Windies to not consider World Cup matches as Twenty20
Former West Indies captain Clive Lloyd tells team to play smart at the ICC Cricket World Cup if they want to make an impact.
“The West Indies must start to play smart cricket because they have two real big games coming up against South Africa and England. Therefore they have to be on top of their game as I’m sure they’d want to qualify,” said Lloyd.
“They should have players who are able to win games, especially when the pitch was quite placid and devoid of bounce and movement during that stage of the (Australia) game,” continued Lloyd, referring to when the Windies lost their match against Australia last Thursday by 15 runs.
“I think on another day, with a better analysis of the situation they could have won that game and this would have given them the impetus to realise that they were serious contenders to qualify for the latter stages of this competition.”
Lloyd furthered that the West Indies were playing carelessly on their match against Australia because of the way they started throwing wickets away.
“There is no reason why they should be almost bowled out on a pitch like that at Trent Bridge, but they tried to hit the aerial shots and started throwing wickets away.”
“The players have to realize that this is not Twenty20. The batsmen need to turn those scores of 30 and 40 into bigger scores and they must be aware that all these teams have world-class bowlers at their disposal,” Lloyd continued.
On the Windies’ next match against South Africa today at Rose Bowl Cricket Ground, Lloyd believes they should not underestimate the Proteas.
“South Africa are up next and while they haven’t performed to their ability, Windies have to be aware of the job at hand as South Africa is in danger of missing out on the top four if they lose,” he stated.
“They now have to re-group, look at the mistakes they made and rectify them so that they can return to their winning ways. I’m still feeling positive about the West Indies overall.”
West Indies currently have odds of -108 awhile South Africa has odds of -109.
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